HoundBlog

Well, another week down. It started off for us with the big snow and trying to get the fence repaired where the snow had broken it down and is going to end with us cutting up the tree that’s bent over the fence. It’s not touching it, but the 50′ tree broke roughly in half and the crown is in the back yard. Getting that down without crushing the fence may be trickier than it first appears.

Other than that, nothing particularly earth shattering is scheduled for this weekend. I have two-thirds of the laundry done already, so that leaves me with one last load to wash, dry & put away and one to fold and put away and one to dry, fold and put away. Well, that’s if I continue to ignore the pile of dog laundry accumulating on the back porch

Ken and I tried to plan show strategies for next month. He has a week off from the 6th through the 10th and then a day off on the 24th. There are shows we could easily go to every weekend that month and we may just do that. Beginning with Charlotte, NC on the 4th & 5th, then the Whippet Nationals in Atlanta the 6th-11th, Columbia, SC on the 18th & 19th and 3 different sets of shows the 24th, 25th and 26th.

One set is in West Virginia and it’s a 4 day circuit with a supported entry for Whippets on one day. We talked about that one pretty seriously. It’s just barely over the VA/WV state line, so is a reasonable drive for us and because of the 4 days and supported entry is likely to draw majors in Whippets. The judges also look pretty good for Nikki.

The other strong favorite is the tiny little show in Waccamaw, NC. We love going to that show because it’s just fun. The club encourages very casual beach wear (sarongs, Hawaiian shirts, etc). Because it’s so tiny, it’s hard to get any points there — the Whippet entry is usually 2-3 of each sex and no specials. Ken’s thinking it might be an easy place to get a group win and Best In Show. Nikki is certainly nice enough to pull that off. I wish we could wait until after the Nationals to make a final decision, but entries close before that, so we’ll have to decide without knowing if Nikki will do anything spectacular or not.

The third set of shows is in Montgomery, AL. We also enjoy going to Montgomery although we usually go for the fall shows in November which often coincide with Thanksgiving Day weekend. Right now, it’s running a distant third. 

Decisions, decisions, decisions……

Eddie shared some photos of the kids in the snow. It’s great getting these. I don’t get enough. It’s hard being a grandparent virtually.

Well, I recon I need to get back to work.

Y’all have a great day and a wonderful weekend! Hope your weather is going to be as nice as ours is supposed to be.

Love to all,

Margaret

Well, we finished Tigger yesterday at the Greater Panama City Kennel Club show, so came home once we had secured a photograph. Don’t know how the photo will turn out. Undoubtedly the dog will look great, but I will probably look as tired and worn out as I felt 😆

It’s great to be home and I’m glad I took an extra day of vacation to recover as I have a literal mountain of laundry to do (Ken evidently does not know how to operate the washing maching :P) and my outside bird feeders are completely empty. I also need to take Reba to the vet as she has lost weight and needs to be checked up.

Ken and the dogs were happy to see me last night/this morning. The parrots all seem to be happy I’m home, too so I must have been missed a little anyway 🙂

Need to run. Got to get on the laundry and let dogs out for the day.

Love to all,

Margaret

Yesterday was a GOOD day!

Butterfly finished!! Yeah! Kemar’s has it’s first dog finished from the bred-by-exhibitor class from start to final point. That should get us a medallion from AKC which will be very nice!

Better yet, Tigger was Best of Breed yesterday for a point which leaves him needing one final point to finish his championship. Keep your fingers crossed for that to happen today.

I’ll keep you all posted!

Love to all,

Margaret

Well, my trip is going OK although I still haven’t put a single point on either of the dogs. Tigger has gone reserve twice and Butterfly has gone reserve once. Tomorrow the points drop to one in each sex and only 2 of each entered so maybe I’ll get it done the hard way 🙁

Lee and I are laughing our way through the South, though. She’s fun to be with and has a million stories. We don’t always jive on when to eat, but we both like the same foods for the most part, so WHERE to eat hasn’t been a problem. I have learned to have her a cup of coffee as soon as she awakens as she’s a bit of a bear until that first cup is down 😆

We stayed at the Days Inn in Valdosta which was nice and the Red Roof in Tallahassee which was a bit run down and tonight we’re staying in an America’s Finest which is very nice. We ate all-you-can-eat Chinese so for now at least, we’re stuffed. Tomorrow we’ll move on to Mariana which is just 30 miles down the road for the final two days of the circuit. I don’t know where we’ll be staying there, as I haven’t made reservations yet, but don’t think we’ll have any problem finding a room. Here in Dothan they were practically begging for us 🙂

Weather has been very nice with the days sunny and mild and the nights cool. It was a bit overcast when we left Tallahassee this morning but is sunny here. We just have to get used to the time zone — it’s Central time here and feels a bit off.

Well, that’s about all there is to tell you.

Love to all,

Margaret

Woke up to rain this morning — the weather forecast says drizzle, but it was doing a bit more than that on the drive in. Not much more but definitely more than just a drizzle. Dogs aren’t happy about it as they all pretty much hate water much like cats, but there was no real reason to leave them crated for the day.

Tomorrow I leave on my trip and I am still pretty excited over it. I have my casual clothes packed and a pretty good idea of the show outfits I’m going to take with me. I originally thought I would take the 3 suits, but think I’ll opt for a slacks outfit instead for one of the days as it’s outdoors and I haven’t checked to see what the weather will be on that day in Valdosta. If it’s raining, there’s no point in wearing panty hose and a nice suit.

Ken wants me to cut his hair this afternoon when I get home from work, so guess I will forego the gym so I can get home to do that. It’s the least I can do after he plotted and printed the mapquest directions from site-to-site for every stop on the trip. I also want to do a last load of laundry. While I did some laundry yesterday and changed the sheets on the bed as well, I want to make sure there’s a little as possible to do when I get back. There’s some other miscellaneous cleaning that needs to be done, too. We never get through cleaning, do we?

I don’t have plans to leave at the crack of dawn or anything, but want to have plenty of time to make sure I have everything I’ll need for the trip, get the dogs bathed and birds settled. I have little slips of paper everywhere with lists on them of things to take. 😆 You would think I had never gone to a dog show by myself…well I have never planned to be gone on one for nearly a week before anyway.

I’ve neglected eyespi20 these past few days — for one thing I haven’t had a burning topic to write about and for another, I’ve had both a poem and a short story percolating in my head and it’s hard to disengage my brain when it’s working on something creative like that to focus on more mundane things. Maybe during the down time between shows I’ll find time to put to paper (or screen) what is coming to gel in the left side of my brain 😛

I’ve also neglected Travelin’ Show as I haven’t uploaded any new photos all week. I’ve TAKEN photos, just haven’t edited them and put them on the blog. Bad me. 🙁

I got a book in the mail yesterday that has me excited. No, it’s not a new mystery or anything any of y’all would be remotely interested in — it’s The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit by Ralph Kimball. I’m excited about it because I’ve been wanting to create a data warehouse for CFR and this book will help me accomplish that, but also because I got the book for $5.99….yes, you read that correctly — $5.99! It cost more than that to ship it (and I didn’t pay nearly what it cost the guy for shipping either! I feel kinda bad for him but he SHOULD have sent it media mail, not first class).

I bought it from half.com where I’ve bought other technical books from but this is by far the best deal yet. This is a $40 book brand new. While my book shows a tiny bit of wear, it’s plenty good enough for my needs and still has the CD in the back that was never taken out even once.

Rest assured though, that I will not be taking this book with me on my trip — I have 3 others that will accompany me that are MUCH lighter reading.

Well, I’ve nattered on long enough — I think you can tell how I feel about these next few days 😆

Love to all,

Margaret

Tags: Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit, Databases

Good Monday to you all! I hope you had a wonderful Valentine’s Day weekend. I know I had a pretty nice one! The weather was glorious (even if we did get a bit of rain) and we spent our weekend with friends.

Although we didn’t win anything of great import at the dog show, we took our young friend, Jenny out to a late lunch on Saturday. Went to Olive Garden where Ken and I hadn’t been in years. The food was great and we all ate until we groaned.

I was intrigued reading Becky’s account of visiting the Berner breeder to evaluate the puppies. We do much the same thing when evaluating a litter of Whippets, so that part was normal to me. Seeing the process through the eyes of someone who isn’t familiar with it was interesting and thought provoking. I kind of laughed to myself over Becky’s comment about needing a thick skin when doing this. It’s not so much a think skin as it is a realization of what your breed standard calls for in your breed and the desire to produce animals to that standard. Just like if you were looking for a piece of furniture with 4 legs carved in Queen Anne style, you wouldn’t want to settle for one with 3 legs of Louis XVII. It’s still pretty, but not correct, so you’ll let someone else buy it who’s looking for Louis XVII and you’ll continue to look for your Queen Anne.

I’m really excited about my upcoming trip. The closer it gets, the more excited I’m getting. My friend Lee is going to go with me so I won’t be traveling alone. We can split up the driving. Kens’ letting me take his precious Equinox with the OnStar system, so we’ll have emergency service at our fingertips should we need it.

I’m also excited because for the first time in nearly 4 months, I’m going to the gym! The puppy is finally out of his cast and off crate rest, so he’s outside in a pen with another dog to play with and I don’t have to rush home to let him out to pee. I’m so glad to get back into that routine!

I am also excited because one of the ladies I’ve become friends with online has had her baby. I didn’t even know she was pregnant until last week when she told all of us that she might be AWOL for a few days because of the imminent birth of her daughter. I told her I wanted to be honorary grandmother and she laughed and told me then that she and her husband had already decided to name the baby Margaret. She had little Maggie on Thursday and I now need to find something to send for the little one. They live in South Africa, so I’ll need to be inventive.

Well, I suppose I should get my mind back on work and close this post out.

I hope you have a wonderful day today!

Love to all,

Margaret

Well, you knew, didn’t you, that after so many glorious days of lovely weather we just HAD to get some that isn’t so nice? Today is our day. Hopefully it won’t be as bad as what they had in Oklahoma these last couple of days! We do get tornadoes occasionally, but fortunately not close to our house.

I’m working today on getting this computer patched and defragmented and backed up. I’ve run a virus scan and am installing the latest patches from Microsoft. Since it isn’t left turned on, I can’t do the automatic thing but have to schedule doing them when I’ve got some free time. It’s downloading the files right now and will undoubtedly need me to log off and reboot before too long.

Our local dog show is this weekend. Ken only has Nikki entered and I only have Payne entered. Then I leave next Thursday for the first of 6 shows in Southern Georgia, Northern Florida and Southeastern Alabama. The first show is in Valdosta, Ga, then I move on to Tallahassee, FL, then to Dothan Alabama, then back to Pensacola, Fl. All in all, I’ll travel nearly 1000 miles with the longest legs being to and from home (around 360 each). Ken’s letting me take his new car. He’s pretty sweet that way. I have to get my car washed and cleaned out so he can use it while I’m gone.

I uploaded a fair number of pictures to both Webshots and Flickr so do stop in to take a peek. I have some nice shots of the full moon to download off my camera and resize for the internet, but those should be ready in a couple of days.

Well, it’s time to boot, so I’ll close this out.

Stay dry!

Love to all,

Margaret

Gosh what a gorgeous weekend we had weather-wise! So sunny and warm! Everyone at my house certainly enjoyed it! Took this photo on the way home from visiting friends.

My friend Janet and I drove to Richburg, SC to visit another friend and fellow Whippet breeder who had a litter of puppies that Janet wanted to see. She had decided to get a new puppy and likes the mother of this litter. So off we went to have some fun playing with puppies. Janet found her puppy and after stuffing ourselves on barbeque, cole slaw, potato salad and brownies, we left for home.

Ken went the other direction to Atlanta to deliver the rescue Whippet to his new home. He got home about 1:00 PM and tried to finish our taxes. I guess I’ll have to finish them this week as he got stuck and couldn’t get any further. Doing taxes isn’t fun. I’m glad he’s done the most of the work 😛

Work today has been steady. Moved an application from one server to the other and that’s gone well. Have to create an email notification for a customer when his jobs complete, but that shouldn’t take too long.

Guess I should get back to it as the day is almost over!

Love to all,

Margaret

Worked from home yesterday and although it was cold (brrrrr), it was sunny and I got lots of bird visitors to my feeders. I especially like this photo as it shows the poor cold bird with the frost on the leaves of the honeysuckle vine that is threatenting to take over my burning bush. I’m pretty sure this is an Eastern Mockingbird, but he’s so fluffed out that it’s hard to tell — he kind of looks like a titmouse too.

As always, my dogs provided some entertainment as well. Ever since Butterfly did her disappearing act last fall, I’ am in the habit of counting noses almost every time I enter a room where they all congregate. Yesterday morning I got to missing Tiffany and went in search of her.

Here’s where I found her…

As you can see, she’s climbed up on the lower shelf of the unit I keep the clean dog bedding on and has made herself quite comfy. I just had to laugh at her! One thing the Whippets and Cresteds share is their overwhelming desire to be comfortable and warm!

I have some other photos that I thought turned out pretty well that I will upload to Webshots tonight.

I’m seeing birds that we don’t see during the summer and it’s such a pleasure to figure out who they are. I have a white throated sparrow and a song sparrow that summer up in Canada. I also have one of a male cardinal on the feeder and to his left you can see a wing where another bird was trying to land next to him. That shot turned out pretty cool looking IMO.

Well, I guess I should get back to work. I’m trying to develop some kind of security plan as we currently have none.

Ya’ll stay warm and dry!

Love to all,

Margaret

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Happy Groundhog’s day! We are official — going to have 6 more weeks of winter (don’t tell Bill, but I think we were going to anyway).

Hope you had a great weekend. Ken and I just puttered around the house doing this and that.

Rearranged the kitchen and WOW! What a difference moving things around can make!

I did the usual laundry, dishes and cooking. Ken did take me out to dinner Saturday night — we went to Outback which is one of our favorites. Got his new computer up and running finally. So far so good — he’s reasonably pleased with it.

Came home Friday to a humongous mess in the house — Nikki had destroyed a pillow I was using in one of the dog crates as a bed. It was stuffed with this polyester fill that was very much like feathers and floated around EVERYWHERE! I’m still vaccuming up that stuff and it took 2 hours to get the bulk of it as it was! She’s a bad, bad dog! Then caught her running through the yard with one of Ken’s shoes which she took back to him like she was some kind of sweet thing. Then Sunday as I tried to clean the floor, she kept stealing my brush — what a mischief maker!

Wrote a poem yesterday on friendship. I think Ma wanted something for a friend of hers and hope this is close. If not, Ma, you’ll have to give me a better idea of what you’re looking for.

I keep getting comments left on this blog by someone writing in Russian. Every time I run the comments through a translator, they come back as meaningless stuff, but I keep consigning them all to spam as I dont’ trust the URL’s to be as innocuous. I would like for them to stop trying, though. I see I have one sitting and waiting for my approval now. Bet it’s another cryllic comment.

Well, I have finally gotten my SSIS jobs to run properly and be called by SQL Server Agent (I know — it’s greek to you) and boy am I glad! I think that makes me officially ready for this new customer who was supposed to start in December.

Well, guess I should go and give the good news to my boss.

Take care!

Love to all,

Margaret